Live stream a video meeting for hosts

Want advanced Google Workspace features for your business?

Learn more about the updated live stream experience.

Important:

You can only start and stop a live stream via the computer.
If you're unable to live stream, make sure your admin has enabled the feature. Learn more about host controls.

This article only applies to meeting hosts and participants who join via the meeting link. For the viewer experience, check out View a Live stream.

Learn which Google Workspace editions can live stream

In-house and Cross Domain live streaming is available with these Google Workspace Editions:

Enterprise Starter
Enterprise Plus
Enterprise Standard
Education Plus: This is available to users with a "Staff" or "Student" license.
Teaching and Learning Upgrade: This is available to users with a “Teaching and Learning Upgrade” license.

Compare Google Workspace editions or Learn about your available Meet features.

If live streaming is enabled for your work or school account, you can let people in your organization watch your video meetings. With Cross Domain live streaming, admins can also allow up to 50 different Trusted Workspace sub-domains to join their live streams. The maximum number of live stream viewers depends on your Google Workspace edition.

Tip: If you’re a Google Workspace administrator who manages Google Meet for your organization, first allow live streaming or set up Cross Domain live streaming.

Who can view a live stream

Only guests in your organization can watch live streams. If your admin turns on Cross Domain live streaming, then guests in your organization and in Trusted Workspace domains can watch.

On the computer, all meeting participants in your organization can stop and start the stream during the meeting, and record the event.
Guests who watch via the live stream link can’t control streaming and recording. Learn more at View a Live stream.

Tip: Live stream organizers will see a viewer count at the top of their screen. The live stream counter will show every new viewer until the first 100 users. After 100 users, it will round to the nearest 5.

Supported Meet browsers

You can use these browsers to view live stream meetings:

Chrome Browser
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Mozilla^®Firefox^®
Opera^®
Apple^® Safari^®

What you can share via live stream with Meet

Real-time employee and staff training
Academic information with students
Conference materials that can’t be shared in person
Organization-wide presentations with multiple presenters
Guests may be designated as view-only

Set up a live stream with Google Meet

In a meeting, at the bottom right, click Activities Live Streaming Stream internally.

Tip: The live stream is only accessible to guests within your organization. Reach out to your Workspace Admins to set up Cross Domain live streaming.

In the menu, select the language for captions.
Click Start Streaming.
Share the live stream through a Copy streaming link.

Tip: If you share the meeting code or URL, the user joins as a participant.

Set up a live stream with Google Calendar

Google Meet: Livestream a meeting

Part 1: Create a live stream event

Open Google Calendar.
ClickCreateEventMore options.
Add the event details, such as date, time, and description.
Add the guests that can fully participate in the video meeting.
- All guests added to this event can be seen, heard, and present their screen.
- People from other organizations and trusted domains can be added. Only people in your organization can record and control streaming.
Next to Join with Google Meet, click the Down arrowAdd live stream.
Click Add live stream again to confirm.
Click SaveSend.
Note: Streaming does not automatically start. During the meeting, at the bottom right, click, click Live StreamingStart streaming.

Part 2: Create an additional event for view-only guests

To invite specific people to the view-only live stream, create a view-only event. The event is added to their Calendar and includes the link for view-only guests.

People invited to this view-only event are not seen or heard in the meeting, and can’t present, record, or control streaming.

Tip: If invited, view-only guests can join live streams even if their accounts don't support live streaming or their organizations have live streaming turned off.

Open Google Calendar.
Click the live stream event you created Edit .
At the top, click More actions Create view-only event.
Add guests or rooms for view-only access, and other details such as a description.
1. To allow guests to join from their own Google Meet hardware rooms, make sure guests have the permissions to modify events.
Click Save Send.

Remove a live stream from a Google Calendar Event

Open Google Calendar.
Click the live stream event Edit .
Next to Join with Google Meet, click the Down arrow Remove live stream.
Click Save.

Tip: The meeting link changes when you add or remove live streaming. Be sure to share the updated link with your guests.

Start and stop a live stream

If allowed by an administrator, any participant in the same organization as the meeting organizer can start or stop the live stream. Live streams automatically stop after 8 hours since live streams have an 8 hour time limit.

You can start or stop a live stream if:

You’re the organizer
You’re in the same organization as the organizer
An administrator allows you in the live stream
You join as a full participant

A view-only guest can only view and can’t control the live stream.

Open Google Calendar and join the video meeting.
Select More Start streaming.
Confirm that you want to start streaming. When streaming is on, at the top left, “Live” is indicated. View-only guests can now watch the meeting using the stream URL.
Select More Stop streaming.
Confirm that you want to stop streaming.

Record a live stream event

Full participants from the same organization as the meeting organizer can record the live stream so people can watch the event after the meeting ends. Live stream events are not automatically recorded, so you must manually start and stop recording. Learn how to Record a video meeting.

Guests who join view-only cannot control recording.

Add captions to your live stream

To use captions for your live stream event, meeting participants should first turn on live stream captions from the main meeting. Live stream captions will appear in the same language as is set in the meeting and are available in English, German, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

For meeting participants:

Join a meeting with live streaming turned on.
At the bottom right, click Activities Live Streaming.
Select the language for captions from the menu click Start Streaming.

Conduct a poll or Q&A in your live stream

Important: Hosts can disable Q&A for live stream participants from their computer.

When you create a Q&A or poll in a live stream, it's automatically available to both meeting participants and live stream participants.

View your live stream report

After a live stream, the meeting organizer receives an email with a Google Sheets report. Learn how to view your live stream report.